Friday, January 02, 2009

Falling Prices may mean Expired Products

Many items at drug stores are health related, a great reason to take a look at the expiry date. We all know that products are marked up to the clouds and it's a bit of relief to see four or five bucks off the regular price. There are reasons for that happening. It could be that there are too many of that particular item left, taking up space for newer products, or it could be a promotion in a flyer to attract customers, or it could be that the item is close to expiring or has already. The latter has been noticed on a number of health products. On one item, the price was about $5 cheaper than usual, and that was attention-getting, but the expiry date showed that the product should have been taken off the shelves two months ago.

This is not difficult to do. If a product database tracking system records a field for expiry date, a programmed alert can be printed every day indicating which products have expired on that very date, and management can direct employees to remove the products.

Check the date, the good deal could turn out to be a raw deal.

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